Over the
past several years using a mobile phone or tablet to browse the internet has
become common place. So much so that more people worldwide now browse the
internet on a mobile device than they do a desktop or laptop computer.

It’s not
just user based mobile web browsing that has taken over – major search engines
such as Google now look for mobile friendly content first whenever someone uses
Google to search for content. Google refers to this as ‘Mobile-first Indexing’.

What is Mobile-first indexing?

Mobile-first
indexing means Google predominantly uses the mobile version of a website’s
content for indexing and ranking. Historically, Google’s index primarily used
the desktop version of a page’s content when evaluating the relevance of a page
to a user’s query. Since the majority of users now access Google Search with a
mobile device, Googlebot primarily crawls and indexes pages with the smartphone
agent going forward.*

As of September 2020 Google will be implementing Mobile-first indexing as its default way of searching for content. Additionally, Googles preferred and recommended format for mobile friendly websites continues to be ‘Responsive’ design – find out more here. This will mean that if you do not have a mobile friendly, responsive website you may start seeing your website start to dip in Google search results.

Aside from being future-proofed in search engine rankings, there are a lot of other benefits to having a mobile friendly, responsive website. They include:

Creating a great user experience on any device

A consistent user experience – no matter what device is being used – is by far the biggest advantage to having a responsive site. Mobile users have little patience for sites that don’t load well on their device or are hard to use. Non-responsive websites will load, but are often too small to read, without the user zooming in and out around the page. A responsive site design automatically alters the layout and appearance of your full website, for optimial display on the screen size it’s loaded on.

Non-responsive site, zoomed to fit screen

Responsive design adapts to users device

Be Search Engine friendly

Google recommends responsive design as the preferred mobile site configuration. They actually consider it an industry best practice. A responsive site means one URL, and one set of content which makes it easier for Google to crawl the site. Google also ranks mobile friendly sites higher in their mobile search results because they now put a large emphasis on user experience, and a responsive site provides a much better experience to users across multiple devices.

Easily manage your content

If you’re looking to update content – which we encourage you to do regularly – there’s no need to have to update content in one area for the desktop version and another area for the mobile version. Because a responsive website is a single site tree of content that alters its appearance and layout based on behind the scenes stylesheets developed for various devices, you are able to update one set of content for your website and it’s automatically updated for every device. It’s that easy. There’s no need to manage two sets of content.

Your online presence reflects who you are as a business and as a professional. You have worked hard at creating your organisation’s brand and reputation. Our job is to make sure clients and prospects experience this through your website on any of their devices they view it on. We will help you create a website that will instill confidence in your business for both clients and prospects, that is easy to use, and looks smart; with Responsive Design, to make their first impression, a positive lasting experience.

Contact us today to discuss how your business can benefit from a new responsive website.

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